Monday, June 1, 2015

When it comes to baking – and you know how addicted to it I am – there are certain ingredients one should always have on hand, and I certainly do: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk, vanilla extract, for instance – with these you can whip up a simple cake, make shortbread, a topping for a fruit crumble or even prepare a batch of pancakes.

Other ingredients, however, aren’t called for in recipes that much, but sometimes I’ll get them in an impulse purchase, only to stare at them in my cupboard/refrigerator/freezer for weeks on end. That happened with a small bag of Ovaltine weeks ago – my brother likes it with his milk in the morning, but since he doesn’t have breakfast here that often I had to find another use for the poor ingredient.

I found this cake on a cookbook I deeply love, and it turned out delicious: very chocolatey, very moist and dead easy to put together – Lauren Chattman suggests it to be served spread with a chocolate glaze, but I thought it would be too much: it is a snacking cake, so to me the simpler, the better.

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Lightly butter a 20cm (8in) square cake pan, line the bottom with baking paper and butter it as well. Dust everything with cocoa and knock out the excess.

Combine sugar, Ovaltine, flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, stir in the eggs, milk, butter and vanilla until just combined.
Transfer batter into prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until risen and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan over a wire rack for 20 minutes, then carefully unmold, peel off the paper and turn onto the rack. Cool completely. Dust with icing sugar to serve.